During MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address this past January 24, Rachel Maddow took issue with Gov. Mitch Daniels’s description of America as  the “shining city on the hill.”  She was irked by what she sees as a spurious addition to John Winthrop’s famous metaphor from his 1630 sermon aboard the Arbella:  “…for wee must Consider that wee shall  be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us.”* What bothered Maddow was the presence of the word “shining,” a word that does not appear in Winthrop’s Read more